WWF 305 Live: Crush! Booger! Viscera! Kane! Big Show! Undertaker!

Crush vs. Bastion Booger WWF Raw 6/28/93 - GREAT

ER: This is great for what it is supposed to be great at. They're a week out from the Stars and Stripes Challenge, and Crush is being lightly built up as someone who could potentially be the one to slam Yokozuna. On the way to the ring Heenan is the one to point out that if ANYone in the WWF had a chance of getting Yokozuna on his tiptoes, it would be Crush. Vince and Savage weren't talking about it, so Heenan bringing it up unprovoked about a good guy felt like something kids would have noticed. And the match story is simple but effective, with early hard shoulderblocks neutralizing each other, and Crush twice unable to lift Booger into a fireman's carry. Doubt was cast on Crush's lifting ability, and there's a great moment where Booger crushes him on the floor with a killer avalanche into the ringpost. Booger works a long gross bearhug that Crush fights out of by jamming his arms down into Booger's prominent titties, while Vince and Savage go on and on about how bad Booger smells and how disgusting his hump is. The man's hump is admittedly off putting, it's a really stupidly effective dumb gimmick. We get some great moments of Booger being a large heavy man, and I genuinely can't tell if he was sandbagging intentionally or not. He barely gets over on a backdrop, kind of rolling and flopping off Crush's back, and then Crush actually goes for a vertical suplex but doesn't get him quite vertical and ends up in sort of a half bodyslam. Intentional or not, it's effective at putting over the denseness of Booger, and Crush is strong enough at selling that he comes off strong for just shifting him. The finish is really great as Crush gets fired up and hits three straight bodyslams on Booger for the win, with Vince flipping out the whole time that Booger is 450 pounds, only 100 pounds less than Yokozuna. The fans recognized that too and it made Crush come off like a genuine babyface threat. 

Undertaker vs. The Big Show WWF Raw 5/3/99 - FUN

ER: Pretty stunning that the first ever meeting between Undertaker and Big Show happened on a random episode of Raw, and wasn't even announced ahead of the episode. That's crazy. They really had no idea what to do with Big Show, judging by his character arcs over his first few months. This is a short match with a quick finish, as Undertaker punches Show into the corner and climbs the turnbuckles, only for Show to drag him down with a nice bearhug. Undertaker rolls to the floor and Paul Bearer hands him ether to dump on his elbow pad. I always love when ether or chloroform gets involved, mainly because the commentary has to say things like "You smell that? It smells like ether!" and I suppose if you're around pro wrestlers long enough on the road you may eventually learn how to identify the smells of chloroform or ether. Taker locks on a sleeper and hooks the ethered pad around Show's face, which is a cool spot to bring down a giant. Oh but this is the middle of 1999 so Undertaker just gets a baseball bat and fucking breaks it over Big Show's face. Why not just jump him before the match and bash him with the bat, why wait the 2 minutes? The bat spot is totally preposterous, as the bat just explodes over Show's head, cutting Undertaker around the jaw and busting open Big Show's forehead, swelling his eye. There was a lot of ridiculous weapons stuff during this era, but Russo realllly loved the implausibility of full force baseball bat shots to the head.

Viscera vs. Kane WWE Backlash 5/1/05 - VERY GOOD

ER: Outside of the weird racist/misogynist Trish/Viscera angle (Viscera slaps her ass and is promised sex upon Kane's demise, Trish calls him - among other things - a "chicken eater" when he fails), this match was a blast. Kane is outweighed by almost 200 pounds so works more as the fast undersized guy. They run into each other nice and heavy, Kane drops fast cruiser elbows like he's Waltman or something, and even hits a nice legdrop with good height. The standing exchanges look good, and even though Kane usually hits light on flying offense, he dialed up the crazy and hit a flying shoulder tackle off the top to the floor. Viscera bumped big, ring shaking back bumps, nice job running into the ringpost, all of it felt very King of the Monsters. We even got a fun spot where Trish ran after Kane with a chair but got blindsided by a Lita cane shot, sending Trish and the chair flying. These two have matched up several times, and this match made it clear that there could be a really good match in there somewhere. I could also see this being their peak, but this was real good.

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WWF 305 Live: Yokozuna! Kamala! Viscera! Prince Albert!

Kamala vs. Yokozuna WWF Raw 5/17/93 - EPIC

ER: This is the kind of match these projects are made for. Literal slapping meat and several staredown moments that made this come off like two walruses fighting over mating privileges. Two monsters eyeballing each other with confusion, square, and charge into each other. Then, after crashing together, both get back even farther to run in again with a bigger lead! Nearly this whole match is them on their feet, Kamala throwing hard overhand chops and Yokozuna fighting back with uppercuts and cross chops. Kamala runs the ropes a lot which looks cool with his size, and he has that way of running the ropes where he looks like he's about to lose his balance, like a toddler getting their legs and running for several steps before plopping gracelessly to the ground. Kamala flies into Yokozuna and I love the force he used to rain down chops. Yokozuna knocks Kamala to a knee, Kamala blocks an overhand chop and delivers one of his own to stagger Yokozuna, and it all plays BIG. Fans in 1993 were so damn into just the concept of a large man FALLING and you could hear that excitement in the crowd. This was already a very exciting night of Raw. There was still the upcoming Jannetty/Michaels match that was set up earlier in the show, and they got to see The Kid upset Razor Ramon, so the crowd is in a good mood. They've already seen a good simple angle and a majorly unexpected win, and now they're seeing two huge giants sprint belly first into each other and then ALMOST fall down. Who among us wouldn't be losing our shit? And they lose it, alright, enough to start a loud USA chant. Why they started a USA chant? Couldn't tell you, but they were united in it because of this match. Fuji grabs Kamala's leg to distract him and allow Yoko to hit two crushing hip attack avalanches in the corner. I wanted this to go even longer, but the visual of the Ugandan savage taking the banzai drop was great.


Viscera vs. Prince Albert WWF Sunday Night Heat 2/6/00 - FUN

ER: Quick match, not quite 3 minutes, but enough to highlight a great aggressive Albert performance. He really kept after Viscera the entire time, even though that meant plenty of things ended terribly for him. The collar and elbows were awesome, as Albert went in for one the second the bell rang and you got a real sense of these two using a lot of weight to push each other around. It's really cool when you can clearly see the power and not just guys casually getting into position. And Albert spends the whole match bringing everything right to Viscera, so the hits are cool and the misses are even better, as that means Albert gets crushed. An aggressive collar and elbow leads to Viscera putting him in the corner and backing into him, charging at Viscera leads to Albert getting dropped by a killer sitout spinebuster (think half rydeen bomb, half spinebuster), another charge leads to Albert eating a big Samoan drop, and Viscera stops *another* charge dead in its tracks by hitting another spinebuster variation (this one more half spinebuster, half belly to belly). Albert's aggression really fueled this, and I was bummed when Big Boss Man's interference on Viscera is what lead directly to Albert hitting his pump kick finisher. With not even a 3 minute runtime I was getting into the idea of where they were going to go with the finish, whether Albert would finally figure out how to not get crushed, or how many more times Viscera could have crushed him before winning. The interference robbed me of that joy, but these two gifted me with plenty of smooshing in the allotted time.


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